Ulysses pays more attention to female breasts as
sources of milk than as sites of sexual arousal. In their
first chapters, both Stephen and Bloom associate women's
mammary organs, unflatteringly, with those of animals. While
both Bloom and Molly think of the sexual pleasures that
breasts can afford, and Molly of the discomforts, the book
takes a resolutely biological approach to this feature of the
mammalian body.
In Telemachus Stephen watches the milkwoman measure
out milk that is "not hers. Old shrunken paps.”
In Calypso Bloom stands beside Molly's bed, looking
“calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft
bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder.”
Circe recalls the goat's udders when Bello taunts
Bloom for trying on Molly's clothes, displaying "behind
closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's
udders in various poses of surrender."
Interestingly, Bloom's association of his wife's udders with
a goat's seems to have been formed at a moment of high sexual
excitement when he was quite aware of her breasts as young,
full, and enticing. He recalls the rapturous scene in Lestrygonians:
"She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth
rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping
currants. Screened under ferns she laughed
warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips,
her stretched neck beating, woman's breasts full in
her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot
I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she
tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me." In Circe the
Howth goat returns, its full organs mirroring Molly's: "High
on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat
passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping
currants."
In Penelope Molly condenses into a short space
thoughts about the pleasures of sucking on nipples, the
purported beauty of breasts, their clear biological purpose,
and the general grotesquerie of sexual organs: "yes I think he
made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he made
me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one
anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him
to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala
fatten them out for him what are all those veins and things
curious the way its made 2 the same in case of twins theyre
supposed to represent beauty placed up there like those
statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide it with
her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a
man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing
hanging down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack
no wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf."
There is more. Moments later, Boylan's love of sucking makes
her think of men's strange urge to become infants again, and
of her strange request to have Bloom suck her when she was
enduring the pain of weaning Milly, and of his strange
enthusiasm for using human milk as a food ingredient: "theres
the mark of his teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple
I had to scream out arent they fearful trying to hurt you I
had a great breast of milk with Milly enough for two what was
the reason of that he said I could have got a pound a week as
a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate looking
student that stopped in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly
caught me washing through the window only for I snapped up the
towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to
weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna
prescription I had to get him to suck them they were so hard
he said it was sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to
milk me into the tea well hes beyond everything I declare
somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only could
remember the one half of the things and write a book out of it
the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the
skin much an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like
some kind of a big infant I had at me they want everything in
their mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman."
